The History of the Internet in a Nutshell

By Cameron Chapman

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If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you spend a fair amount of time online. However, considering how much of an influence the Internet has in our daily lives, how many of us actually know the story of how it got its start?

Here’s a brief history of the Internet, including important dates, people, projects, sites, and other information that should give you at least a partial picture of what this thing we call the Internet really is, and where it came from.

While the complete history of the Internet could easily fill a few books, this article should familiarize you with key milestones and events related to the growth and evolution of the Internet between 1969 to 2009.

1969: Arpanet

Arpanet was the first real network to run on packet switching technology (new at the time). On the October 29, 1969, computers at Stanford and UCLA connected for the first time. In effect, they were the first hosts on what would one day become the Internet.

The first message sent across the network was supposed to be "Login", but reportedly, the link between the two colleges crashed on the letter "g".

1969: Unix

Another major milestone during the 60’s was the inception of Unix: the operating system whose design heavily influenced that of Linux and FreeBSD (the operating systems most popular in today’s web servers/web hosting services).

1970: Arpanet network

An Arpanet network was established between Harvard, MIT, and BBN (the company that created the "interface message processor" computers used to connect to the network) in 1970.

1971: Email

Email was first developed in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, who also made the decision to use the "@" symbol to separate the user name from the computer name (which later on became the domain name).

1971: Project Gutenberg and eBooks

One of the most impressive developments of 1971 was the start of Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, for those unfamiliar with the site, is a global effort to make books and documents in the public domain available electronically–for free–in a variety of eBook and electronic formats.

It began when Michael Hart gained access to a large block of computing time and came to the realization that the future of computers wasn’t in computing itself, but in the storage, retrieval and searching of information that, at the time, was only contained in libraries. He manually typed (no OCR at the time) the "Declaration of Independence" and launched Project Gutenberg to make information contained in books widely available in electronic form. In effect, this was the birth of the eBook.

1972: CYCLADES

France began its own Arpanet-like project in 1972, called CYCLADES. While Cyclades was eventually shut down, it did pioneer a key idea: the host computer should be responsible for data transmission rather than the network itself.

1973: The first trans-Atlantic connection and the popularity of emailing

Arpanet made its first trans-Atlantic connection in 1973, with the University College of London. During the same year, email accounted for 75% of all Arpanet network activity.

1974: The beginning of TCP/IP

1974 was a breakthrough year. A proposal was published to link Arpa-like networks together into a so-called "inter-network", which would have no central control and would work around a transmission control protocol (which eventually became TCP/IP).

1975: The email client

With the popularity of emailing, the first modern email program was developed by John Vittal, a programmer at the University of Southern California in 1975. The biggest technological advance this program (called MSG) made was the addition of "Reply" and "Forward" functionality.

1977: The PC modem

1977 was a big year for the development of the Internet as we know it today. It’s the year the first PC modem, developed by Dennis Hayes and Dale Heatherington, was introduced and initially sold to computer hobbyists.

1978: The Bulletin Board System (BBS)

1978: Spam is born

1978 is also the year that brought the first unsolicited commercial email message (later known as spam), sent out to 600 California Arpanet users by Gary Thuerk.

1979: MUD – The earliest form of multiplayer games

The precursor to World of Warcraft and Second Life was developed in 1979, and was called MUD (short for MultiUser Dungeon). MUDs were entirely text-based virtual worlds, combining elements of role-playing games, interactive, fiction, and online chat.

1979: Usenet

1979 also ushered into the scene: Usenet, created by two graduate students. Usenet was an internet-based discussion system, allowing people from around the globe to converse about the same topics by posting public messages categorized by newsgroups.

1980: ENQUIRE software

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known as CERN) launched ENQUIRE (written by Tim Berners-Lee), a hypertext program that allowed scientists at the particle physics lab to keep track of people, software, and projects using hypertext (hyperlinks).

1982: The first emoticon

While many people credit Kevin MacKenzie with the invention of the emoticon in 1979, it was Scott Fahlman in 1982 who proposed using :-) after a joke, rather than the original -) proposed by MacKenzie. The modern emoticon was born.

1983: Arpanet computers switch over to TCP/IP

January 1, 1983 was the deadline for Arpanet computers to switch over to the TCP/IP protocols developed by Vinton Cerf. A few hundred computers were affected by the switch. The name server was also developed in ’83.

1984: Domain Name System (DNS)

The domain name system was created in 1984 along with the first Domain Name Servers (DNS). The domain name system was important in that it made addresses on the Internet more human-friendly compared to its numerical IP address counterparts. DNS servers allowed Internet users to type in an easy-to-remember domain name and then converted it to the IP address automatically.

1985: Virtual communities

1985 brought the development of The WELL (short for Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), one of the oldest virtual communities still in operation. It was developed by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in February of ’85. It started out as a community of the readers and writers of the Whole Earth Review and was an open but "remarkably literate and uninhibited intellectual gathering". Wired Magazine once called The Well "The most influential online community in the world."

1986: Protocol wars

The so-called Protocol wars began in 1986. European countries at that time were pursuing the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), while the United States was using the Internet/Arpanet protocol, which eventually won out.

1987: The Internet grows

By 1987, there were nearly 30,000 hosts on the Internet. The original Arpanet protocol had been limited to 1,000 hosts, but the adoption of the TCP/IP standard made larger numbers of hosts possible.

1988: IRC – Internet Relay Chat

Also in 1988, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was first deployed, paving the way for real-time chat and the instant messaging programs we use today.

1988: First major malicious internet-based attack

One of the first major Internet worms was released in 1988. Referred to as "The Morris Worm", it was written by Robert Tappan Morris and caused major interruptions across large parts of the Internet.

1989: AOL is launched

When Apple pulled out of the AppleLink program in 1989, the project was renamed and America Online was born. AOL, still in existence today, later on made the Internet popular amongst the average internet users.

1989: The proposal for the World Wide Web

1989 also brought about the proposal for the World Wide Web, written by Tim Berners-Lee. It was originally published in the March issue of MacWorld, and then redistributed in May 1990. It was written to persuade CERN that a global hypertext system was in CERN’s best interest. It was originally called "Mesh"; the term "World Wide Web" was coined while Berners-Lee was writing the code in 1990.

1990: First commercial dial-up ISP

1990 also brought about the first commercial dial-up Internet provider, The World. The same year, Arpanet ceased to exist.

1990: World Wide Web protocols finished

The code for the World Wide Web was written by Tim Berners-Lee, based on his proposal from the year before, along with the standards for HTML, HTTP, and URLs.

1991: First web page created

1991 brought some major innovations to the world of the Internet. The first web page was created and, much like the first email explained what email was, its purpose was to explain what the World Wide Web was.

1991: First content-based search protocol

Also in the same year, the first search protocol that examined file contents instead of just file names was launched, called Gopher.

1991: MP3 becomes a standard

Also, the MP3 file format was accepted as a standard in 1991. MP3 files, being highly compressed, later become a popular file format to share songs and entire albums via the internet.

1991: The first webcam

One of the more interesting developments of this era, though, was the first webcam. It was deployed at a Cambridge University computer lab, and its sole purpose was to monitor a particular coffee maker so that lab users could avoid wasted trips to an empty coffee pot.

1993: Mosaic – first graphical web browser for the general public

The first widely downloaded Internet browser, Mosaic, was released in 1993. While Mosaic wasn’t the first web browser, it is considered the first browser to make the Internet easily accessible to non-techies.

1993: Governments join in on the fun

In 1993, both the White House and the United Nations came online, marking the beginning of the .gov and .org domain names.

1994: Netscape Navigator

Mosaic’s first big competitor, Netscape Navigator, was released the year following (1994).

1995: Commercialization of the internet

1995 is often considered the first year the web became commercialized. While there were commercial enterprises online prior to ’95, there were a few key developments that happened that year. First, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption was developed by Netscape, making it safer to conduct financial transactions (like credit card payments) online.

In addition, two major online businesses got their start the same year. The first sale on "Echo Bay" was made that year. Echo Bay later became eBay. Amazon.com also started in 1995, though it didn’t turn a profit for six years, until 2001.

1995: Geocities, the Vatican goes online, and JavaScript

Other major developments that year included the launch of Geocities (which officially closed down on October 26, 2009).

Java and JavaScript (originally called LiveScript by its creator, Brendan Eich, and deployed as part of the Netscape Navigator browser – see comments for explanation) was first introduced to the public in 1995. ActiveX was launched by Microsoft the following year.

1996: First web-based (webmail) service

In 1996, HoTMaiL (the capitalized letters are an homage to HTML), the first webmail service, was launched.

1997: The term "weblog" is coined

While the first blogs had been around for a few years in one form or another, 1997 was the first year the term "weblog" was used.

1998: First new story to be broken online instead of traditional media

1998: Google!

Google went live in 1998, revolutionizing the way in which people find information online.

1998: Internet-based file-sharing gets its roots

In 1998 as well, Napster launched, opening up the gates to mainstream file-sharing of audio files over the internet.

1999: SETI@home project

1999 is the year when one of the more interesting projects ever brought online: the SETI@home project, launched. The project has created the equivalent of a giant supercomputer by harnessing the computing power of more than 3 million computers worldwide, using their processors whenever the screensaver comes on, indicating that the computer is idle. The program analyzes radio telescope data to look for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

2000: The bubble bursts

2000 was the year of the dotcom collapse, resulting in huge losses for legions of investors. Hundreds of companies closed, some of which had never turned a profit for their investors. The NASDAQ, which listed a large number of tech companies affected by the bubble, peaked at over 5,000, then lost 10% of its value in a single day, and finally hit bottom in October of 2002.

2001: Wikipedia is launched

With the dotcom collapse still going strong, Wikipedia launched in 2001, one of the websites that paved the way for collective web content generation/social media.

2003: VoIP goes mainstream

In 2003: Skype is released to the public, giving a user-friendly interface to Voice over IP calling.

2003: MySpace becomes the most popular social network

Also in 2003, MySpace opens up its doors. It later grew to be the most popular social network at one time (though it has since been overtaken by Facebook).

2003: CAN-SPAM Act puts a lid on unsolicited emails

Another major advance in 2003 was the signing of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, better known as the CAN-SPAM Act.

2004: Web 2.0

Though coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci, the term "Web 2.0", referring to websites and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that are highly interactive and user-driven became popular around 2004. During the first Web 2.0 conference, John Batelle and Tim O’Reilly described the concept of "the Web as a Platform": software applications built to take advantage of internet connectivity, moving away from the desktop (which has downsides such as operating system dependency and lack of interoperability).

2004: Social Media and Digg

The term "social media", believed to be first used by Chris Sharpley, was coined in the same year that "Web 2.0" became a mainstream concept. Social media–sites and web applications that allow its users to create and share content and to connect with one another–started around this period.

Digg, a social news site, launched on November of 2004, paving the way for sites such as Reddit, Mixx, and Yahoo! Buzz. Digg revolutionized traditional means of generating and finding web content, democratically promoting news and web links that are reviewed and voted on by a community.

2004: "The" Facebook open to college students

Facebook launched in 2004, though at the time it was only open to college students and was called "The Facebook"; later on, "The" was dropped from the name, though the URL http://www.thefacebook.com still works.

2005: YouTube – streaming video for the masses

2006: Twitter gets twittering

Twitter launched in 2006. It was originally going to be called twittr (inspired by Flickr); the first Twitter message was "just setting up my twttr".

2007: Major move to place TV shows online

Hulu was first launched in 2007, a joint venture between ABC, NBC, and Fox to make popular TV shows available to watch online.

2007: The iPhone and the Mobile Web

The biggest innovation of 2007 was almost certainly the iPhone, which was almost wholly responsible for renewed interest in mobile web applications and design.

2008: "Internet Election"

The first "Internet election" took place in 2008 with the U.S. Presidential election. It was the first year that national candidates took full advantage of all the Internet had to offer. Hillary Clinton jumped on board early with YouTube campaign videos. Virtually every candidate had a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, or both.

Ron Paul set a new fundraising record by raising $4.3 million in a single day through online donations, and then beat his own record only weeks later by raising $4.4 million in a single day.

The 2008 elections placed the Internet squarely at the forefront of politics and campaigning, a trend that is unlikely to change any time in the near future.

2009: ICANN policy changes

2009 brought about one of the biggest changes to come to the Internet in a long time when the U.S. relaxed its control over ICANN, the official naming body of the Internet (they’re the organization in charge of registering domain names).

The Future?

Where is the future of the Internet headed? Share your opinions in the comments section.

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About the Author

Cameron Chapman is a professional web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience in the industry. She’s also written for numerous blogs such as Smashing Magazine and Mashable. You can find her personal web presence at Cameron Chapman On Writing. If you’d like to connect with her, check her out on Twitter.

Awesome post! I bet that it’s surprising to a lot of people that HTTP wasn’t the beginnings of the Internet. When you hear the term ‘Internet’, most people think of the WWW and browsing HyperText Documents.

Nice article. Found quite a few things that I didn’t know about the Internet from reading it. One small thing though – JavaScript wasn’t created by Sun Microsystems… a marketing deal between Sun and Netscape is the reason why it’s called JavaScript, but it was created and released initially by Netscape.

In exchange for Netscape being allowed to package and release Sun’s Java runtime as part of Netscape Navigator, Netscape agreed to call their new scripting language JavaScript. It was originally called Mocha, then renamed LiveScript, then finally JavaScript.

So Sun was involved somewhat, in fact they owned (still own?) the trademark on the name JavaScript, but they didn’t really have anything to do with its creation.

First , is there a difference between the Internet and the Web ? If we look back to the origin we see that cooperation between universitys was the intention and driving force . That is the spirit of Internet . The spirit of the Web is more common commercialization and interests .

It is natural that progress will be made both on the Internet and on the Web . Bigger , faster and more complex tech for advanced software . It is the HW tech that sets the boundries for what can be done . But already there is very much that can be done with time and money .

Also travelling to Mars will make an impact on Internet/WWWeb . Communication will be further advanced and more sophisticated .

The commercial forces will want to enroll more and more people into WWWeconomy and that might be a good thing . Whats the difference between working on the WWWeb and the labormarket – should there be a difference ? No need to worry if the difference is a good difference . But yes , can government allow WWW to control the making of daily bread ?

So much to know . So much to remember . So many fascilities and tools and machines and programs and levels and dimensions and matrix´s and codes and versions and upgrades it isn´t at all strange people wonder in awe .

But I believe in the systemstructure to keep the train on the track and if I am wrong we can make it right .

Correction: JavaScript was actually created by Netscape and Mozilla in 1995 and had no relation to Java by Sun Microsystems except that they wanted to make it look like Java so it would be easy to work with.

Gopher is not a search engine any more than the world wide web is a search engine. Veronica and Jughead were search engines for the Gopher protocol however they both only indexed the names of menu items, not the actual file contents.

Thank you for writing an excellent summary of the complicated history of the Internet and for publishing it in a publicly accessible site. Like Tim Bernes-Lee, who wrote and dedicated the protocol for WWW to the public domain, you are one of the heroes who make the technological innovations work for everyone, rather than enrich a few business proprietors, who somehow acquire the legal rights to the innovations made other creative people and then use the technology exclusively for their personal profits.

Future of the web? If Google is to believed, cloud computing will take over as the primary means of computing, shifting us back to the mainframe/terminal mode of using computers. This means that internet connected devices don’t need much besides huge pipes, so netbooks and smartphones will continue to kill off the tower-based PC.

Cloud computing also creates a huge demand for standards and interfaces that will allow web-apps to easily communicate and share info. This should lead to the end of the typically anonymous web, as user profiles will sync, creating persistent identity.

In short, take current trends and project outward. As more of the world comes online expect to see exponential growth. That’s my take on things.

I noticed you had SETI@home starting in 1999. Pretty sure I was using it much earlier than that. I worked for AOL shortly after its beginning, and I remember our IT dept banning it because of the network resources it was consuming.

Good article though :) Another thing is you left out CServ & DowJones network, which were pretty big around the days of BBS’s.

* Java was launched by Sun Microsystems.
* JavaScript was originally called LiveScript and was created at Netscape, and included in a version of the Netscape Browser. Shortly after its original introduction, some misguided marketeer renamed LiveScript to JavaScript even though the language had no relation to, and is in fact quite different from, Java.

Great post Cameron! From the year of my birth to the current day, we’ve managed to transform the first purely text-based website into works of art viewed by billions of people every day that we can view on huge glossy monitors and tiny iPhone screens in our pockets – because of this I’m really not too sure what could happen next! I think maybe Flickr should have made it into your timeline, though ;)

Thank you all for your time in commenting and making this article better and more accurate.

@Dylan Parry and to the other people that noted the JavaScript error (@Tim, @Zach Echlin, @Jeremy, @Pedants R. Us, Randy, @Wilhelm Fitzpatrick with a nice bullet-point explanation): I apologize for that, I should have caught that easily being a JavaScript nut myself, but somehow I missed it. I’ve corrected it and linked to @Dylan Parry’s comment.

@Mats Ahlqvist: I can’t tell if you’re being funny or serious.

@Brent: I see what you’re saying, and yes, there should’ve been some sort of mention regarding search engines like Altavista, Yahoo!, Hotbot, heck even MSN search, which did help us find stuff on the internet.

@Raelifin: Alright, so I’m not the only geek thinking about establishing standards because of this shift to the cloud. “Interoperability” within web apps, which sort of realizes itself now as public API’s, is the word I’m looking for. Now we just need a singular/standardized API specifications. Your comment just inspired me with like 5 article topics right there. :)

@Mark Alves: I couldn’t help but laugh after having to scroll up and see what you mean.

Huh. I don’t mean to make a political condemnation here but why would you put up a picture of Ron Paul when Obama was clearly the one who really made it clear that the internet is an effective campaign tool? Sure, Ron Paul made a massive amount of money on one day, but Obama made literally hundreds of millions throughout the campaign and also recruited thousands of contributors in many different states. Sure, the internet had Ron Paul fever for quite some time but Obama fever was FAR mode ubiquitous and widespread and even spread to other countries, far more so than Ron Paul did.

No mention of the fact that ARPANET came from a military cold-war era project (DARPANET) to develop a communications network that could survive a nuclear war. This is why the ‘net’ approach was chosen. In the first diagram on the page the Pentagon is even one of the nodes…

You left out BITnet. I had thought that the portals with CERN and Arpa and others were a big deal in pulling the www together. No?

Didn’t know about MUD. Played single player, text-based Adventure (never got through the crack in the rock). We played Al Alamein, on a board, with dice, and talked about figuring out a way to have each of us in a tank, on the computer…

Nice article Cameron. I think web application framework development will be one of the things we gonna talk a lot in a while. The fact that we stopping thinking about “web pages” to “web application”, its for, the biggest gain. The future will depend of course the community, specially open sources community, in sharing, creating, and most important the relationship that we will have between different communities.

It was my understanding that the concept of the Internet was conceived to keep communication links alive in case of war or disaster….a military type application, usage at educational institutions….then commercial/consumer usage.

No mention here os compuserve, Lex-Nex and other information archives.

I would add Compuserve:
CompuServe, (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its acronym CIS), was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of information services such as AOL…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServ

My guess is he’s about right on Semantic Web finally living up to (at least) some of its original promises and providing a linked data graph serialization format for the World’s data (although there will surely be MANY more hurdles until this is a reality, but expect it sometime in the coming decade)…

After that we will have more complete integration of all forms of entertainment into/onto the web (we’re almost there already), followed shortly by integration of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality into the Web experience (especially look for gestural, voice-activated and then thought-based navigation of information).

Finally when “they” try to chip us (whoever they are, and if they indeed exist, today or in the future) many will be presented with the opportunity to form a symbiosis with the technology we’ve created. There will become two races those who are pure-human and those who are androgenous “meta-beings” who (due to their immortality) will eventually represent humanity in interstellar travel while regular humans are stuck on this rock to lead a simple life for as long as it keeps turning (let’s hope this is still an option at least).

Great sourcing and specification, i am amazed over what have happend in the last years with the iPhone and mobile.me, have had internet since 1995, now i try to meet the user friendly mature services. What´s next? Its good for the humans and all the worlds connections. I have a great social exchange of it on a level i earn.

We are going to have a global fiber optics network and improvements in hardware; and we are going to see what real broadband is all about! Downloading even the more complex and sophisticated Web sites with all kinds of bells and whistles will be instantly (without the least delay). The entire human knowledge will be available and at our fingertips for everybody around the world to pick up free of charge for the most part or at an affordable level. We are going to get TV and radio through Internet. Communications will be perfect and cheap around the world and (when the times comes) beyond! Telephones will use digital technology and will be cheap (much, much less costly) than they are today. We are going to use photons (for the most part) and not electrons. Consumption of energy will be minimal in relations to computers and Internet. And, one day we will have creation of “images” in three dimensions. This is what I foresee (or who knows may be foreknow) for the future of computers and Internet. This is what at this moment comes to my mind. This is what I anticipate. There are very probably others points to consider that do not come to my mind at this moment. All this, that I say, is for the most part (but not entirely) based on intuition.

This article was fantastic–may I just raise to minor points? Firstly, wasn’t IRC really the first peer-to-peer filesharing method? Secondly, just in point of fact, I believe Rep. Paul raised at least $6 million on the second big fund-raising day:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17332414 “Ron Paul’s $6 Million Haul Makes History.”

Thank you for your time. I am posting this article to my Facebook, post-haste.

Mats Ahlqvist, the difference between the Internet and the Web is that the Web is a service (okay, collection of services) and protocol, that uses the Internet as its communication medium. Similarly, Usenet is a service that uses the Internet as an underlying layer but formerly used UUCP as a lower layer (and for a while a glorified sneakernet for one important liink, IIRC), and inter-site email has used the Internet/ARPANET, UUCP, FidoNet, BITnet, CSnet, and others for its communication foundation. (And in turn, UUCP, while usually using dial-up, can also use the Internet or other LAN/MAN/WAN connection as a lower layer.)

So the Web is not the Internet, like the USPS is not the road system. The Web runs on the Internet, just like snailmail is trucked from Post Office to Post Office over highways, driven from the local PO out to neighbourhoods over surface streets, and walked door to door over sidewalks.

Many of the items after 1991 on this timeline belongs on a timeline of the World Wide Web, only one part of the Internet. This history would better reflect the history of the Internet by representing some of its other communication protocols.

What would really be interesting is seeing a plot of # of bytes transferred by each protocol (smtp, usenet, gopher, ftp, http(s), bittorrent…) against time in years. I guess no one has been collecting data on all that, but it would be interesting to see.

Doesn’t mention .edu or their electronic mail share system that was the start of world-wide e-mail. It might be hard to put a specific time on it but to discuss the current events or the “Technology War” between Google and Microsoft that has become an “Internet War.”
Some of the key topics (not all):
Google becoming the first well-done search engine instead of a poor quality and/or fully sponsor-driven result engine started if off.
Both had satellite imagery but Google came out with Google Earth. Then Microsoft came out with directional images allow each position to be seen from a separate NESW perspective and Google followed with the street view.
Google launching Writerly which became Google Docs and Microsoft made Office Live, Office Share, and a few others in response.
Microsoft bought Hotmail to expand their e-mail systems and tried to buy Yahoo mainly for they recent merges and improvements on their search engine which combined with the other Yahoo services(e-mail, shopping, auctions, etc) could of turned the tables. And since Yahoo turned down the offer, they decided to launch Bing.
More could be said but hopefully you get the idea.

Look closely at the 1977 ARPAnet map pictured at the top of this article and you can see boxes labeled FPS AP-120B and SPS-41 at ISI, SCRL, SRI, BBN (RCC), and Lincoln Lab. These are the half-rack-sized array processors connected to PDP-11 minicomputers that were required to digitize and compress speech for transmission in packets across the ARPAnet, starting in 1974, before IP existed. This technology blossomed as VoIP 30 years later when networks became fast enough and the processing was reduced to a few integrated circuits.

For the first time NGO’s organized worldwide action on Climate Change and working together in this: 350.org, TckTckTck, Avaaz, Greenpeace, WWF, Hopenhagen and many other local, regional, national or international organizations creating the biggest voice on the internet so far on one subject: climate change.

When People Lead. Leaders Should Follow and Sign the Deal in Copenhagen or should we say our Hopenhagen. http://tinyurl.com/yhhbkoe

Really interesting stuff, many thanks for taking the time to work on this post! I think one protocol definitely worth noting here would be BitTorrent, though. After all, you have Napster and SETI@home there, but nothing specifically concerning P2P networking.

It’s interesting to see all this “old” screen-design, things have changed so rapidly! And of course many important things miss in this short abstract – but again its briefness is also the advantage of this contribution.

Isn’t it ridiculous to mention the iphone??
If you really mention the iPhone in an article about internet history, you should mention the BlackBerry first. That was a real new concept. What was the new concept in the iPhone …? Multitouch?

It would have been fun if the Article would have included the famous “Y2K” panic. This was the year that 2000 was suppose to make computer systems interpret 00 as 1900 messing up all the computing work. because it would calculate a negative numbers ie between 1 Jan 2000 and 31 Dec 1999 could be calculated as -100 years rather than 1 day. This was a major bug for the whole finance industry. The bug not only existed in computer software but it also existed in the firmware being used in the computer hardware. In general this bug threatened all the major industries including utilities, banking, manufacturing, telecom, airlines. All types of malfunction predictions where assumed; I made sure I went to Times Square that new year’s eve of 1999 just to be caught up in what everyone though it would become the biggest global computer malfunction ever. Didn’t happen though.

The future of the Internet? The Internet will develop its own worldwide economy (RIAA might have something to do with it) independent of any meatspace economy or national currency.

As cloud computing grows, CPUs will be reduced to a thumb drive, and public-access consoles — with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse — will become more available so you can carry your computer in your pocket and access it and the Internet just about anywhere.

iPhone, BlackBerry? Where were forgotten SonyEricsson P800 and Nokia Communicator? Both on markets long time before iPhone, Communicator released in -96 and P800 in -02. P800 with internet, camera, mp3-player and touch screen where you could write with ‘pen’. So what is so revolutionary in iPhone?

What fun this article was. Thanks for bringing this all together. A couple of thoughts:

1. Does Minitel have a place in this history? It’s not strictly speaking the internet, but it did play a big role in France’s (non)adoption of the internet.

2. I agree that Compuserve is a big omission.

3. I hadn’t realized how little time separated the launch of AOL and the launch of W3 protocols. In the late 90s I worked for a website that had a dual presence on AOL & the web, so we coded pages in both html and AOL’s Rainman. Even then it was possible to do so much more with W3 pages than with Rainman pages (which had small windows about 1/3 the size of a screen), but somehow I always thought of them as equally viable alternatives. Now I see that developmentally, AOL and W3 really come from 2 different generations of online communication.

Just wander what did “on the go” -technology and related services had to do with this?
SMS (before smartphones), internetcafés, laptops, WiFi, propotional price cut of the gear?
Not to mention about the national investments in schooling and infrastructure, venture capital, Palo Alto, loose money, war and pornography…

>> The first “Internet election” took place in 2008 with the U.S. Presidential election.

Bullshit.
he idea of having electronic voting in Estonia originated in early 2001 and quickly gained popularity among heads of the then proactively “e-minded” coalition government of the small northeastern European country. The realization of the project came in the October 2005 local elections when Estonia became the first country to have legally binding general elections using the Internet as a means of casting the vote. The system withstood the test of reality and was declared a success by the Estonian election officials. The 2007 parliamentary elections followed with second successful use of Internet votinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia

I believe that if the point is to identify key moments (and I agree with the posts around iPhone, should have been Blackberry or at least Nokia Navigator) the first search “engine” I used was ARCHIE, which originally became available in 1990, beating both Lycos and Alta-Vista by 5 years!

I never knew that the whole internet developed practically in my life time ,thats a suprise.The internet now days is a very powerfull tool and its power is still growing, However the future of the internet is threatened by goverments who are increasingly monitoring and trying very had to control it.In my view the internet is our domain and not that of goverments and so for it to develop and give us all the dreams that its founders envisioned ,we should as much as possible continue to fight for its freedom,by making it impossible for any single body to be able to control it.

Where’s it going? The semantic web that Tim Berners-Lee expressed as, “I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines.”

I thought the US Military Defense system created the internet (the way you connect your wires) to be able to transfer information between their base at different places??
Very well written article though.

Cameron, this was a great work and I thank you a lot. It impressed me as much as the first time at school when I read the Evolution theory: it’s made my… made up my mind! In spite of some lacks or chronological errors, punctually appointed by some, you gave us a whole idea of the very new and fast development of Internet-the Web of what I’m sure millions of us ignore-d. Thanks again, guy! Kiss Kike from Italy.

“UNIX” did NOT influenced Linux AND FreeBSD… FreeBSD (and NetBSD) began from BSD OS code that was evolving since 70-ties, also first working TCP/IP was in BSD. You should review your claims because there are more errors in your story as others pointed out.

Great stuff that brings back many memories of watching the last 15-20 years unfold in the technology world. It would have been great to see this include the number of hosts and web sites by year also. It is hard to find those type of numbers.

excellent travelling in a time befor the world flattened – unfortunatley a bit US-centric, at least some European universities (eg.ETH Zurich HTML; http://…)contributed milestones in the developement….

Nice article — I like having the illustrations. In the 90’s the librarians were teaching classes at our university on using the school’s gopher pages. We got to throw around such great terms as Archie, Veronica, Jughead and Lynx. I think I only recently threw away the outlines I wrote for teaching some of this. Should have kept them as history!

I had the fortune of listening to Vint Cerf – the father of TCP/IP. Love the fact that these guys are still so excited when they talk about new breakthroughs…SPDY is one thing which is worth a watch and is going to revolutionize the Internet further.

I was born 10 years or so after the idea of whats now known as internet so.. most of this stuff tho, I knew way back… and SETI@Home well 1999 sounds about right, and if it came earlier, I think it really wasn’t open to mass public cause of testing… so thats my take on that issue…

Very nice rough draft, but I do believe you could use some better date checking. As well a lot of the main stream ‘1st’s’ you list were not the first and I think it might be worth checking into for accuracy sake. A lot of things here happened a lot earlier then they are given credit :-)

Google didn’t start the cloud thing, or even popularize it, but I do think that’s where we’re headed, in terms of internet technology. I think we’ll be going to the next logical step, though, and instead of just sharing programs and such, we’ll start sharing cpu cycles, like seti online already does, and the human genome project.

It is amazing the way the internet has developed over time..This article is a very educational read…Though every thing has its pros and cons, I am still very thankful to all the internet developers…The internet has become a medium to put forward the talent of many creative artists and designers…Thanks for posting this…

I am an engineer of year 1969 and have lived all the stages referred with great personal interest as much as professional and itself so surprised as in the beginning. Congratulations!

The concept of networking was by no means new in 1969; even as early as the Romans a network of roads that allowed the rapid movement of troops but also the faster interchange of information by messengers. During the Napoleontic and American Civil Wars there were various schemes developed to distribute messages over a network of communication lines, primarily along lines of sight between prominent locations.
[refs. http://www.thocp.nethttp://www.ing69.info ]

Hey where the heck is AlGores name……..all this time I thought he invented the internet….I don`t even see his name mentioned….he said he invented it…so wasn`t I supposed to believe him…like Global warming?

DonQ, the new concept in the iPhone in 2007 was a desktop Web browser that renders the exact same Web from a Mac or PC. Before the iPhone, there was a separate “Mobile Web” using Wireless Markup Language not HTML, and utilizing special “mobile stylesheets.” The iPhone ignored mobile stylesheets and WML and rendered the same view as a desktop browser. Since the iPhone, mobile Web development is now done in HTML5 instead of WML and there is no separate mobile Web ghetto.

Another innovation is the iPhone has no mouse or cursor and that has become the standard on mobiles now, and also zooming the page to the small screen. The first Web browser in 1990 ran on NeXT (the same kernel runs in iPhone) and had a mouse, cursor, and 1024×768 screen. So putting the full 2007 Web on a device with no mouse, no cursor, and only 480×320 was a big deal.

Blackberry is getting a desktop class Web browser next year, based on the open source browser engine from iPhone. Android already has the iPhone engine and so does Palm and Nokia and Chrome.

Nice guideline through the History of the Internet. A major hi-cup is the lack of reference to Douglas Engelbart !Augmentation of the Human Intellect Project” and hos Mother of all demo’s in 1967.
Doug come out with the E-mail back then an he his the inventor of the e-mail.
Plus of the mouse and the Guider User Interface. And Hypermedia. And also in 1967 of the Video-conference (with the chat feature.
Just to name the issues underlies scores of inventions he come out with, meaning the supporting protocols, the supporting packet-switching technology (Doug played a large part in it, thou he later advocated different paths).
With no mention to this work this article is nice. Only that. It’s not that reliable.
Plus, further reading to have a reach & reachness on the history of the Internet can hardly avoid John Naughton’s A Brief History of the Future- the origins of the Internet, perhaps the best book written so far about the subject.http://www.dougengelbart.org/history/engelbart.htmlhttp://www.briefhistory.com/

I lived through most of this timeline.. I ran a BBS in 82, used gopher in 93 and mosaic in 94, had a hotmail addy in 96. First website was built in 97 and I never looked back.

you wanna know where the internet is going now? As someone said before me, it’s hardware-based. People have poured money into better/faster/higher quality, and consumers show they’d rather watch crap vids on Youtube than buy blu-ray disks. They’d rather sort through blogs than read the Times. The future is low-budget user content read on phones. I advise everyone to start learning mobile app programming.

As long as governments are kept at arms length and not allowed too much control over the internet; it will be safe and one of the few avenues left for ordinary people to exercise some influence over the direction of their own and that which human history takes.

My fear though is those with vested political and commercial interests will usurp this wonderful medium and seek to use it to stymie any real freedom and true democratic principles in favour of their ever increasing desire to manipulate us into perpetual servility.

I always get nervous when those in political authority start pontificating about the supposed “dangers” of the Internet.

Thank you Jacob Gube and dglenn for your comments on my comment regarding the future of our common interest. Yes, you are right – the web runs on the internet like the economy runs on the state. Do the web run with the daily bread on the internet? It might if economic interests gets their will. I know I’m spending my time for that to happen.
Already back in 1975 we were expecting optic fibres and a new tech based on light techno but something seems to slow down that process as up to now – I feel something is about to happen especially with telecommunications. And the funny thing is that economy changes with the techno changes. Is that because service is different from economy as to the power and control is out of the hands of the ordinary economic society. I find that reassuring.

I lived through all of the Internet development years and I do remember most of it. This is a great summary article. QUESTION:> When are we going to get BROADBAND supplied by our power utilities…at our power outlets in our homes?
I am ready for that and, I know that they are working on it!
Dick

Fantastic article giving a quick overview and timeline of the history of the internet, and the internet definitely is gathering more momentum as the time passes, and enjoyed the 1st webcams whole purpose to watch the coffee pot, its all about priorities :-)

Everyone needs to quit complaining!!! The way you put this together is cute with pictures and it’s easy to follow. I’m really not fit to make judgements on the accuracy of all of this because I’m only searching the history of the internet to finish this Project I’m doing in highschool to get my technology credit haha. But all the nerds need to shut up; Why don’t you make a better one if they think they’re so smart?? Stop hating on her work. Good job girl(:

I think you can add the revolutions occurring around throughout the middle east to this article, seeing as how they’ve been organized via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Add “Internet takes down a dictator (or two)”

The internet is likely the greatest invention in my 65 years,that being said, I believe we are at a pivotal stage where governmental controls versus virus/anti-virus sites form a tipping point in this great information highway. I pray that good supersedes evil.

I have been using the internet since before I have memories I can access. I love this article. Yes some of the things weren’t the “first” or may have happened a slightly different way, but this doesn’t read like a nerd article. It reads like a general consumption article based on the advent of certain things rather than the invent of things. Yes there were many web-able phones before iphone and yes the blackberry was out there, but the iphone really was the one that made it seem like any phone user could utilize a “smartphone” capability. BB were for business people and the rich, not us common folk. (Just so we are clear, I have had mobile-able phones since 2001 when I even use to tether my phone to my laptop for service through earthlink) So rather than focusing on the inaccuracy that exist and will exist in any simplification of things, I applaud Cameron for making this work accessible to people like my wife who now has some understanding of where all this “stuff” came from and why I get so excited over new stuff coming out.

Thanks for putting the history of the internet in “potato head” language for me. I needed it for research on a different type of program for college and I’m not into some of the geeky information provided out there. Thanks again.

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To all the individuals who thinks it reflects their knowledge and intelligence from putting someone else down who clearly accomplished something that you haven’t, it doesn’t. It only reflects how immature you are. Thare nothing wrong with correcting a mistake or error, but its about how you present yourself.

The evolution of the internet has been extremely awesome thing happened over the years. It has made a person very self dependent and also changed the mindsets of people. The social networking has got people from the four corners together. Internet!!! the most important part of the generation of today.

IT was good that they created the internet. if we did mot have the internet we would not have facebook,or stuff to do power points to do are work. Every body love the internet they stay on it all day they love it.

Al gore’s ontribution. Prior to Al Gore, the Internet was a closed and restricted to the United States military. The Internet was only completely opened to the whole world due to decisions made by Al Gore. He opened the internet to the whole world. LOTS OF stupid people in this world say thast Al gore lied about inventing the Internet. Mr. Al Gore made executive decisions given to him by President Mr. Clinton to make the Internet completely accessible to anyone with a personal computer or Macintosh all over the world. Many stupid in this world think that Mr. Al Gore’s contribution to the Internet is nothing. In fact, Mr Clinton had deliberately given Al Gore the power to make executive decisions whether the Internet should remain a preserve of American generals or make it accessible to the whole world.